


Strange Mercy

by th_esaurus



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Extremely Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Religious Guilt, Sugar Daddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 17:34:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8809834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: "You have offered me something desperately intimate," Graves sighed, sounding tired. "Do you understand that, Credence?"Credence hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "I am naïve, Mr. Graves," he said, slowly. "But I am not deliberately obtuse.""A very diplomatic answer," Graves replied, half smiling.





	

Credence never considered himself to be deliberately obtuse. It was something his mother accused him of, on occasion, though where she had picked up the phrase, he did not know: she was a woman of simple needs and short words. She would ask him in the low, even voice she used when she suspected him of untruths: "Are you being deliberately obtuse with me, Credence?"

Any answer was the wrong one.

Still. Credence thought a better way to describe himself, if he talked of himself at all, was naïve. He had seen the word written down, and did not care for the flourish above the i: he was not fanciful and the decoration smacked of pride. He did not know a lot, though, and did not always see past the obvious. That is what he meant by it.

"I am naïve, sir," he said to Mr. Graves, once, apologetically. "I cannot—appreciate things well."

"What a curious thing to say," Graves told him. "I find you very inquisitive."

He would be moreso, if he could find his voice more often. He loved to listen to Graves speak – of anything, in truth, but most of all of magic – but he did not always know the questions to ask.

What Credence meant was this: once, he was listening to Graves speak blithely about how drab and lifeless these No-Maj boulevards seemed, as they walked along the storefronts together. Graves' arm brushed against Credence's elbow three times, in total. Credence found it easier to look through the windows, rather than at Graves, so when they stopped for a moment, he must have seemed to stare.

"Do you like them?" Graves asked suddenly.

"I—I'm—" Credence focused his eyes, and found himself looking at a row of scarves, from black and grey all the way through the bright yellows, all arranged as if on a pair of steps. They looked soft. Cashmere, the notice exclaimed, though he did not know what this was. "I suppose so, sir—"

"Would you like one?"

"Not at all, sir," Credence stammered, and perhaps Graves mistook the boy's stuttering for a suppressed desire. Perhaps it was, of a sort.

"Come now. A gift."

"Please, I—"

It was not that he could not ask for what he wished. He would not know if he liked the thing or not, whether it was in fashion or to be coveted. It looked, to him, like something Graves might wear, and so he liked it through the association, not for the thing itself. He had been trained not to have strong opinions on such worldly goods.

Naïve, you see.

Graves bought him the scarf, and wrapped it around his thin neck, and his knuckles brushed Credence's chin twice as he did so.

Credence gave the scarf to a street orphan, later that day, a girl he made sure he did not recognise from his mother's young congregation. He could not keep it. Graves had brought him a cheap pocket-watch, to better keep their meetings, and this Credence had hung from the railings of a little churchyard, abandoning it there. Graves had also gifted him a pair of shoes, when he noticed how worn and small Credence's own pair seemed. He knelt down and tied the laces himself. These were harder to get rid of. Credence ended up in a panic, and shoved the shoes into a trash can while several passersby stared at his apparent madness, and walked home in his moth-eaten socks, and told his mother that he had been set upon by a gang of boys who had beaten his scalp and taken his shoes as he cowered.

"Are you being," his mother had asked, very slowly and very dangerously, "deliberately obtuse, Credence?"

The only gift of Graves' that Credence had ever accepted, quite against his will, was a fresh cream tart that Graves brought with a frown, complaining that Credence was slighter than ever, and had stood impatiently while Credence swallowed the thing bite by bite. He could not help but cry while he ate it.

"My dear boy," Graves murmured, and held him by the shoulders, and embraced him, pulling Credence's head gently towards the crook of his neck. Credence's sugar-sweet lips brushed against Graves' bare skin, just below his jaw.

Credence, later, put two fingers against the back of his tongue and forced himself to retch until his stomach was empty, sobbing all the while.

He could not accept anything Graves offered him.

Credence recalled, very clearly, his mother's words from one drab morning, as they ladled soup into bowls for the children of the congregation. One boy balked at the pile of pamphlets he was given along with his lukewarm soup, and complained aloud: why? Why must he? Why must he take them? Nobody will have one from him, he sulked, petulant and noisy.

Credence had held his breath, and wondered if his mother would strike the boy. But she simply looked at him, kindly. "Nothing in this world comes free, dear child," she said, soft. "Even God's love requires our piety in return."

Credence, an innocent, took this at its worth.

He could not offer Graves his piety.

His thoughts about Graves were not—

Pious—

He thought of Graves in abstracts rather than specifics. His eyes, when they caught the edge of the sun. The specks of grey in his light stubble. His fingers, their girth, the callous on the thumb of his wand-hand. Credence did not think of those hands upon him, because he did not like to picture himself: his own image was always fleeting, peripheral. Instead, he pictured inane tasks Graves might perform – lighting a cigarette with a match, rubbing a stray crumb from his bottom lip after a meal.

He was not knowledgeable enough about the ways of the world to fit these puzzle pieces together and form some tangible desire.

But he still felt a warm hunger, low in his belly, when he thought of Graves' hands.

His thoughts were not pious.

And he could accept no love until they were.

*

Graves took him to Macy's, on a bustling Friday afternoon. His mother had preached across from the grand façade once – a den of greed and opulence, she called it – and they had been told, not asked, to move on. The security men were rougher with Credence than his mother or sisters. But nobody paid him any heed now, with Graves' wide hand spread on the small of his back.

They walked slowly, leisurely, Graves browsing the displays and trinkets, though Credence barely lifted his eyes from the floor. He pointed out a stand every now and then, or a bright poster advertising what's two stories up, and laughed a little meanly at how dreary everything was in this drab world.

It was already more colour and life than Credence could stand.

Graves steered him into Menswear and picked up a thin pair of black suspenders. "What do you think?" he asked wryly, holding them up. They didn't look nearly sturdy enough for his broad shoulders.

"I'm sure I don't know, sir," Credence murmured.

But Graves just smiled, a pleased, knowing smile. He took Credence to the dressing rooms, pulled a curtain across them both.

Then he stooped down and unbuckled Credence's belt, threading it out of his beltloops. Credence held his breath tightly, and did not exhale until Graves dropped it carelessly on the floor by their feet. He touched Credence seven times through his threadbare cotton shirt while he fixed the suspenders.

"There," Graves said, holding him at arm's length. "You look very handsome, Credence."

Credence was shaking. Graves' hands had been pressed against both his shoulders for twelve seconds. "My mother—will have too many questions—"

Graves' pleasure soured immediately. "Your _mother_ ," he said, like a curse word, "has no business in this. It is my whim to see you look nice."

"Please sir—I have no money to afford it on my own—"

Graves tsked, his grip firming, his eyes dark. "They are deliberately simple, Credence—"

_"Please—"_

"She will take them from you?" Graves snapped at once. His tone was enough to make Credence cower, pull back from his grasp. "Like the shoes? Like the scarf? I am not an idiot, boy. You are naked of everything I have given you. Will you shun my magic just the same?"

"No, I—" Credence gasped, a physical pain in his chest, fat tears collecting in the corners of his eyes and falling, unbidden "—I could not accept—you must understand, sir—"

Graves sighed, suddenly defeated. His emotions, like Credence's mother's, could be so changeable. But he always seemed resigned to softness rather than spite.

He whispered a word Credence did not understand – a spell, he realized later with a sick gasp – and the outside world became at once muffled: any interest passing shoppers and gossips had in their argument was suddenly lost.

They were an island, and Credence's tears made its rivers.

"Come now, my boy." Graves bundled him to his chest, his arms wending around Credence's back until all the air between their bodies was pushed aside; as though breathing were secondary to Graves' embrace. "I lost my temper. I am sorry. I only wish to bring some small joy to you. We will live in light and wonder, you and I, once our child is found—until then, let me do this for you?"

"I cannot, Mr. Graves—I can give you nothing in return—"

"Is that your concern?" Graves smiled at him softly. "You are searching for me, are you not?"

Credence swallowed, his throat thick and blocked. "That is a mission, sir, not a courtesy."

Graves did not reply for a very long time. His hands were rubbing slowly up and down Credence's back as the world ignored them. One trailed up high, pressed against the bare skin of his neck, and lingered there.

"What do you think you could you offer me?" Graves asked eventually, smoothly. He did not sound cruel, as though he thought Credence had no worth to give. Merely curious.

"My piety," Credence whispered, cringing at his own lie.

Graves laughed, a short bark. "I have no use for that, Credence."

It's—a small relief. Credence would not have been able to keep the promise.

Graves' warm hands slid up to his jaw, cupping his cheeks and looking Credence in the eye with a kind, questioning smile. Credence could only meet his gaze in flickers, looking at him and then away, back, then away; distracted by the urgent need to memorise the shape of his hands.

"Think on it, Credence," he murmured. "And tell me when you have decided what you can offer."

They did not buy the suspenders, and Credence's mother still beat him with his belt that night.

*

Credence always did as he was asked, and he thought long into the night what he could give Graves in return for his kindness. He had no wealth, no knowledge, no imagination. He could pray for Graves, but Graves had a unique disdain for what he called _No-Maj Occultism_.

All Credence had to offer that was his own was his body, and even that was already second-hand, treated with disregard by his mother.

It was, he decided, better than nothing at all.

*

It was a week or more until Credence met with Graves again, and Graves asked him two things immediately: did he have any suspicions about the child (he did not, Credence admitted), and had he thought of a reciprocal offer?

Credence hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

"Then it's settled," Graves announced, and walked him pointedly to a shabby bookstore nestled half way down Fourth avenue, and told him he should choose anything except the King James Bible. Graves did not suit the close, dusty shelves at all, and Credence wondered why, of all the places on Book Row, he had picked this one; until Graves took out his wand. He never did it with a flourish. It always seemed a commonplace motion, as though it were no more than a billfold or pocket watch. It made Credence's heart thump behind his ribcage every time he saw it.

Graves tapped an innocuous hardback lying spine-up in the non-fiction section, and at once the wall seemed to elongate and stretch, and bookshelves knit themselves together out of thin air, and books flew backwards onto the wooden shelves as though sucked into existence. Each spine and cover was beautiful than Credence had ever seen, illustrated covers with gold leaf and silvery etchings like they had been penned by ancient monks. The titles terrified Credence with their matter-of-fact declarations of magic: guides to goblin culture, practical runes and stonecraft, the breeding of cognizant creatures, spellwork for the pre-school witch and wizard.

"Very few of these are suitable for beginners," Graves muttered, scanning the titles. "But you shall have whatever takes your fancy and I will keep it with me until your magic is proficient enough for it."

"Sir," Credence gasped, "I can—"

"Do not tell me you cannot," Graves snapped, brittle. He stroked his hand down the back of Credence's neck, to calm them both. "Tell me, my boy," he murmured. "What you have decided to give me in return."

Credence worried his bottom lip. It seemed foolish, now, to think that Graves could have any physical use for him, when he had already failed him so utterly in his mission. "My—" He took a shallow breath. "M-my body, sir."

Graves' palm stilled on his neck. "Tell me again?"

"My body, Mr. Graves. It is yours."

"Find your book," Graves muttered, stepping back, and he sounded dark and unhappy.

"Mr. Graves—"

"I am not angry," Graves assured him. "Find your book." He pressed a few strange, heavy coins into Credence's hand, minted with symbols he had never seen. "The teller will take them, and I will wait for you out back."

He vanished down the shadowy aisles, and left Credence shaking and breathless. He spent a half hour in front of the books, and thirteen minutes of that was catching his breath and willing his hands to stop trembling. He had a deep fear that Graves would not be waiting for him; that the coins in his hand were meaningless; that he would be accused of thievery and witchcraft; that he would be burnt alive by his own mother, living proof of her waking nightmare that the evil of magic had seeped into every corner of their lives—

He took in a short breath, and then several longer ones.

Then Credence craned his neck sideways and read the spines of every book on the shelves.

He picked, in the end, a slim tome that seemed to be full of fairytales. The teal cover had a shimmering etching of a small white rabbit sitting upon a tree stump, and Credence had the absurd idea that, when all of this was over, he might read the stories within to Modesty. None of his mother's children were allowed fables at bedtime; only parables.

He bought the book quite without incident, and Graves, true to his word, was waiting in the alley around the back of the little bookstore. He seemed ill at ease, his hand playing with something at his chest, though he stopped when he noticed Credence. Credence was not sure whether to approach him, and held the book out between them like a feeble guard.

Graves smiled when he saw the title, though it did not quite reach his eyes. "I will keep it safe for you," he said, and he tapped the book with his wand, and it jumped up and shuddered into a tiny facsimile of itself. He put the shrunken book in his coat pocket, and then held Credence's empty hand. His thumb over the thudding pulse in Credence's palm.

"You have offered me something desperately intimate," Graves sighed, sounding tired. "Do you understand that, Credence?"

Credence hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "I am naïve, Mr. Graves," he said, slowly. "But I am not deliberately obtuse."

"A very diplomatic answer," Graves replied, half smiling.

He stroked over Credence's palm a few more times, not to heal but simply to touch. And then he beckoned Credence closer to him. There was barely space between them but Credence went, regardless. He always liked the moment when Graves' hands encircled him, and though he were a pentagram and Graves about to cast him like a spell; and then he felt ashamed for enjoying such a thought.

But Graves put his hands on Credence's cheeks this time, tilted his face up. It was always a shock to remember they were the same height, as Credence spent so much time with his eyes to the ground. His mother had said once that he was watching for the Devil, and Credence had not known at the time whether she was serious or mocking him; he realized later that his mother was always serious.

"Look at me," Graves murmured.

"Yes," Credence breathed. Their faces were inordinately close, and it made his clenched fists shake.

"What if I tell you this is not a gift?" Graves carried on, his voice so low.

"Yes," Credence gasped, "Yes, that would be better—"

"So be it," Graves said, and angled Credence's face just slightly to the left, and pressed their mouths together, so softly. Graciously, he let Credence adjust to the sensation for a moment before he pulled lightly at his chin, got his lips parted, and breached them with his tongue. Credence made a high, helpless noise at this, but Graves put a hand on the back of his neck to stop him shying away. His tongue-tip ran over Credence's top lip, pressing against his teeth, mouthing at Credence over and over until Credence felt the heat of his mouth burn up to his eyes and spill over, hot tears running freely down his cheeks. Mingling between their lips.

Graves wrenched himself back but did not go far. Their foreheads still touched. Credence had lost count entirely of the seconds their skin had been pressed to one another. "My dearest boy," he murmured. "Credence. You are so fragile, and I am afraid to break you."

"You shan't," Credence stammered. "I have—I have taken worse, Mr. Graves—"

"You cry terribly easily."

"Yes," Credence admitted, still shedding fresh tears now.

Graves dipped forward and kissed him gently, once, twice more. Not so deep, not so overwhelming this time, just the press of his soft mouth against the corner of Credence's lips, his salty cheek, the jut of his jawbone. Then he pulled back entirely. His hair was a little mussed, at the back, and Credence realized he had done that. His hand, of its own accord, had wended up the back of Graves' neck while they kissed, gripped a great tuft of his short hair.

He felt mortified.

But Graves smoothed it down with one hand like it was no bother.

"I shall see you again in two days, Credence, if you wish it," he said, and gave Credence not the name of a street as he usually did, an alley in which to converse, but a full address.

"Of course," Credence breathed.

"Only if you wish it," Graves told him again. As though Credence had a choice in the matter. His body was Graves' now.

They had agreed it.

*

 

That night, his bed pushed to the far corner of the church attic, as far away from his sisters as he could get, Credence imagined Graves' hands on his body. It was impossible to imagine a sense of himself – he could only picture a void, seemed unable to recall his own reflection – so instead he dredged up every memory he could of Graves' fingers on his skin. Every thoughtless caress, light and brisk; every purposeful touch, firm and warm and deep to his bones.

Credence could not tell whether the low churning in his gut was pleasure or shame.

But it did not quite matter now.

*

Credence stood in the narrow corridor, worrying his wide-brimmed hat in his hands. The apartment Graves had directed him to was not at all what he'd expected: a grey clerks' apartment block in a dull, unmagical part of the city. He stood for a good few minutes before he knocked on the shabby door; and the door opened instantly.

There was unquestionably magic inside.

It looked like temporary lodgings. Not Graves' home proper – Credence did not have flights of fancy, but he supposed from snippets of conversation that Graves came from an old family, with a grand estate somewhere in New England – but a place for storage and sleep, convenient. It was much larger inside than the building allowed for, and was richly painted, covered in dark fabrics and redwood bookshelves; a high backed leather armchair, a thick wooden steamer trunk with copper rivets, silk curtains pulled across tall windows that Credence never saw on the building's thrifty façade. There was a shadowy corridor which led down to a labyrinth of doors and hallways, rooms and rooms and rooms.

It was messier than Credence expected: piles of books and papers in every nook, dark illustrations spilling over old tea-stained pages, notes in languages he does not recognise, clothes out on a rail instead of in a wardrobe, wine-glasses and goblets on every surface. Quills and inkstains. An inhuman sort of clutter that made Credence stare, his body small and his eyes wide.

There was a pair of shoes by the doorway, the same style as Graves had bought Credence weeks back. A replacement pair. A gift he was meant to accept, now that they had an agreement.

Graves took a long moment to appear, and Credence could not tell whether he walked in from the shadowy hallway or simply blinked into the room. He was wearing neither his greatcoat nor his vest, just his white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar and his sleeves rolled to his elbow. He ushered Credence in from the doorway with a little annoyance.

"I can—" Credence started, gripping the rim of his hat, "Come back—"

Graves waved his hand impatiently. "No, I was working, it's fine. An excuse to put it aside." He fixed his smile on his face and seemed to size Credence up.

Credence always feared he was found wanting. Graves' eyes were fond enough.

"Will you kiss me, then?" Graves asked.

"— _Yes_ ," Credence said desperately, and went to him.

He let Graves lead by necessity. Credence did not know how to kiss, did not know what to do with his hands, his mouth, his tongue, so Graves held his chin at the proper angle and consumed him. It was that warm, ugly pleasure that he had felt so often, thinking of Graves, but moreso, all over his body, in his neck and chest and stomach. Credence let out a string of soft noises as Graves took his mouth again and again, and felt so much that he might cry; curled his toes within his shoes to keep his tears from spilling.

Graves pulled back for breath. His mouth was moist and pink, and Credence could not help but surge forward, nip it softly, to taste the mingle of their spit on his bottom lip. "I—I'm sorry—"

"It's quite all right," Graves murmured, pleased. He ran his thumb high over Credence's cheekbone, and Credence could feel from the burn of his thumb how flushed his pale skin must be. He took Credence's wrist softly in his hand, and turned it upwards; kissed there on the paper-thin skin where his veins thrummed strongest.

And then he moved Credence's hand down slowly between their bodies. Let it press lightly against his crotch. Held it there for a moment, and then loosened his grip.

Credence kept his palm pressed there of his own accord. It had been asked of him, after all.

"I would have so much of you," Graves muttered, and he sounded almost angry at himself.

"I would give it to you," Credence told him, his eyes closed. He could feel the shape of Graves' prick, through his slacks, if he pressed a little harder. "You have given me—so much, sir—"

"I want your mouth," Graves said, all of a sudden.

"Tell me how?" Credence had to ask it, and Graves nodded, stern.

He helped Credence to unbutton his trousers. Graves shifted his hips, pulled his prick out slowly, so as not to startle, and guided Credence to put his palm upon it. It felt—awkward, soft and unfamiliar, and Credence made a small, unhappy noise in the back of his throat. He had not touched his own in a good many years, and had forgotten the sensation.

"Put it in your mouth," Graves told him, slightly strained, sensing his unease, "and it will stiffen."

"Will that be—good?" Credence whispered.

"Yes," Graves assured him. "Go to your knees, now. That will make it easier."

He talked Credence through it all the while, a gentle hand stroking over his hair. Credence was not sure how much he could take, how much he should, and suckled nervously at first on just the head of Graves' prick. It tasted of sweat, mainly, with a musty smell from being so close to Graves' crotch and thighs; nothing like the sharp cologne scent Credence was used to from Graves. Graves kept one hand rooted in Credence's dark hair, and the other on the base of his prick, working it until it began to thicken.

"That's it," he murmured, hard in Credence's mouth now. "Can you take it in a little more?"

Credence tried. He could do no more than try. He gagged a little at the weight of it on his tongue, and eased back, and heard the throaty groan Graves let loose at that, and did it again; and once more.

"Credence—" Graves' hand stroked further down his hair, to the base of his scalp, and his grip became firm, guiding; driving.

Credence thought, absurdly, of God, while Graves fucked into his mouth. Perhaps, he thought, he had never been pious enough to know God's love at all; but at least he had known Graves'.

When Graves came, molten and burning, Credence let loose a keen of surprise, and forced his throat to swallow. He did not know if he was meant to. But his body was not his own now, and he would learn.

He would have to learn.

He could not be naïve now, after all.


End file.
